I’m slowly becoming more active in Playwicki District and was tapped to head up a Webelos weekend.  It’s a bit of a weak weekend which lasts less than 18 hours, but hey they’re kids.

I’m reasonably good with Publisher and combined with Google image search one can create a reasonably snazzy form with a little knowledge of fonts.  So, I made a form for the event and passed it out at the district committee meeting and the response was stunning.  I had no less than three people go “this is good”.  The professional was impressed it was in color.  This is from the man who sent me a form by printing it out in color, scanning it to black and white, and sending me the pdf of the original publisher document.  At the end of the meeting someone said to me “you’re doing a great job”.  How!? I just made a fucking form and people are using it as a proxy for the success of the event.  I have almost no service corps, I don’t have a budget and the patch won’t be in by then but I have an awesome form that apparently covers that.  This is the equivalent of judging the fiscal soundness of a nation by how nice its money is.  Which, if it were the case, Zimbabwe would be in a lot better shape.

Duckets of security

Duckets of security

Units can request a site by completing a reasonably simple form, but some of the responses are… interesting:

“Reason for Request: Medical Need
If a request is for a medical need, please explain: Medical Need”

Site are requested by choosing from a drop-down menu, and a unit requested the following:

“First Preference: Please choose one
Second Preference: optional
Third Preference: optional”

During the early days during testing I encountered some problems such as people not realizing what the form was for despite the phrase “site request” being used 20 times:

“Comments: I want to talk to Mikey”

Scouting, beating a path of technology into the 20th century.